Our guest will be Ron Kagan, the internationally esteemed Executive Director and C.E.O. of the Detroit Zoological Society, which runs the famed Detroit Zoo and Belle Isle Nature Conservancy. Ron will speak to the history of the Detroit Zoo and describe its evolution into one of the world’s premier centers for the study of nature, its creatures, and environmental sustainability. As a prime venue in our annual Summer Cultural Destination Series, a visit to the Detroit Zoo will be an unforgettable experience.

 

Join us as we welcome Garet Livermore, executive director of Great Camp
Sagamore, in the Adirondacks. Built in 1897, Sagamore is one of the nation’s
finest surviving Great Camps, and profoundly influenced the American Rustic
Style (c.1890-1920). In 1901 Alfred Vanderbilt bought the estate and directed
much of its architectural expansion into a preeminent summer retreat. After his death in the Lusitania disaster, this work was continued by his widow, Margaret Emerson. Mr. Livermore will illuminate for us this unique cultural resource.

 

Our guest is Jay Platt, a friend of the show and owner of Ann Arbor’s landmark West Side Book Shop. Jay will spotlight the 38th Annual Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair, which he organizes, taking place Sunday, May 22, from 11:00-5:00
p.m., in the Michigan Union Ballroom. Jay will describe the importance of the fair to our region, the myriad dealers from around the country who will be there, and a sampling of the kinds of rare books, maps, photographs, and ephemera that will be for sale. Don’t know what ‘ephemera’ is? You’d better tune in!

More at: annarborbookfair.com

 

As Ed spends the Mother’s Day weekend with his family, please enjoy an encore broadcast of his interview with Dr. David Penney, curator of The Toledo Museum of Art’s monumental exhibition, Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection, on view through Sunday, May 8. Don’t miss this opportunity to visit the TMA, and experience 120 beautiful works spanning cultures across the continent.

More at: toledomuseum.org

Join Ed as he welcomes historian David M. Lubin, whose book, Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War, examines the war’s impact on the soldiers
and civilian populations of the combatant countries through the eyes of painters, photographers, sculptors, and filmmakers of the period. This groundbreaking book produces a numbing realization of our vulnerability, personally and socially, in the face of massive technological warfare.

More at: Oxford University Press

Carole McNamara returns to describe a new exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art: “New Technologies and Victorian Society: Early British Photographs from the UMMA Collection.” Carole is the Senior Curator of Western Art Emeritus at UMMA, and this is the first of three final exhibitions she curated before her retirement. A beautiful show, not to be missed.

More at: umma.umich.edu

Join Ed as he describes the moving grand reopening of the William L. Clements Library on April 11th. Also, Ed will mark the 104th anniversary of the Titanic disaster by a review of marine paintings by Norman Wilkinson, whose Plymouth
Harbour hung above the fireplace in the ship’s first-class smoking room, as well as those by Montague Dawson, whose intrepid clippers have graced the salesrooms of several auction houses in recent years. Also featured will be the life of William T. Stead, the groundbreaking publisher, who perished with so many others on April 15, 1912.

More at: clements.umich.edu

J. Kevin Graffagnino, director of the U-M’s William L. Clements Library, returns to help celebrate the coming reopening of this superb historical resource.

Kevin will highlight some of the Library’s iconic books and manuscripts, such as Columbus’s 1493 account of his discovery of the New World, and papers describing British perspectives on the Revolutionary War.

More at: clements.umich.edu